VOLUME 20, NUMBER 1 ART CRITICISM /, '\ I \ I " , ART CRITICISM , 1; 1. " J vol. 20, no. 1 Art Departmerit State University ofNew York at Stony Brook .. Stony Brook, NY 11794i.5400 The editor wishes to thank Art and Peace, The Stony Brook Founda­ tion, President Shirley Strumin Kenny, Provost Robert L. McGrath, and the Dean ofThe College ofArts and Sciences, James V. Staros, for their gracious support. © 2005 State University ofNew York at Stony Brook ISSN: 0195-4148 2 •. Art Criticism Founding Co-Editors Lawrence Alloway Donald B. Kuspit Editor DonaldB. Kuspit Advisors lames Rubin Mel Pekarsky Managing Editor Robert R. Shane Business Editor GediminasGasparavicius Art Criticism is published by: Department ofArt State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-5400 Prospective contributors are asked to send abstracts. However, if a manuscript is submitted, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for its retum. Manuscripts accepted for publication must be submitted on aPC computer disk. Please contact the managing editor for a style sheet. Subscriptions are $20 per volume (two issues) for institutions and $15 per volume for individuals in the continental United States ($20 outside the continental U.S.). Back issues are available at the rate of$l 0 perissue. vol. 20, no. I 3 1\ 4 Art Criticism Table of Contents The Tragic Hero: Harold Rosenberg's Reading of Marx's Drama of History Hee-Young Kim 7 r De Kooning'sAs!zeville and Zelda's Immolation Martin Ries 22 The Crisis ofthe Object I Gevork Hartoonian 31 The Crisis ofthe Object II Gevork Hartoonian 55 What's Jewish About Jewish Art: Some American Views Matthew Baigell 76 Game On: Videogames, Popular Culture and the Aestheticism oflnteractivity William Martin 86 vol. 20, no. 1 5 1 ArtCndcism The Tragic Hero: Harold Rosenberg's Reading of Marx's Drama of History Hee-YoungKim -I The dramatic problem ofthetwentieth century is that of the rela­ tion between collective identities active on the stage of history and"_ the self of the individual as a more or less willing component of a.'. mass "I." I Harold Rosenberg Since Harold Rosenberg defined art as action in "The American Ac­ tion Painters," the meaning of "action" has been interpreted as the physical gesture of the artist's action or asa political call to action. Taking the meaning ofthe physical act of painting with the idea of the canvas as "an arena in which to act" where the artist could pursue his autonomous creation, the misconcep­ tion has been that Rosenberg contributed to consolidating the autonomy of art. In this paper, I argue that Rosenberg's "action" is of a philosophical nature, relating to the artist's unending search for self. I intend to prove that "action" is philosophical, instead of physical or political, by investigating his early work that addresses the tragic human condition. This paper responds to Fred Orton's article "Action, Revolution and Painting," which relates Rosenberg's concept ofaction to an impetus for social revolution.2 Orton's study provides a contextualizing inquiry into the political implication of the "action painting." During the 1930s and 1940s, Rosenberg associated himself with left-wing magazines, such as Art Front and Partisan Review. Orton focuses on this association, in addition to the revolutionary implications embedded in the word "action" and Marx's influence on Rosenberg, to redress a "lazy existential-humanist-reading" of Rosenberg's work. Byar· ticulating Rosenberg's-resistance to the established tradition, Orton argues that the action painter was associated with the proletariat. vol. 20, no. 1 7 However, one must consider that although Rosenberg employed Marx's social analysis as a substantial framework for his criticism, he disagreed with Marx's idea of the abstract collective identity of the proletariat. While Marxist views shaped his ideas, Rosenberg was also influenced by the social, cultural, and political changes taking place in his time. Building on the ideas shaped by both Marx and the current climate, Rosenberg developed his own unique perspective. By the time Rosenberg coined the term "action painting" in 1952, he had formed his individualist perspective to address the act of painting and the identity of the artist. Rosenberg experienced and understood Marxism as a period phe­ nomenon. Like other New York intellectuals, he was involved in Marxism in the mid 1930s, a time when young American intellectuals faced the despair gener­ ated by the Great Depression. In this climate, Marx's revolutionary vision provided the best answer. New York intellectuals believed that Marxism would bring order out of chaos and provide a unifying philosophy to organize radi­ calism. In particular, they held that the cosmopolitan values in Marxism would offer an optimistic view that embraced intellectual diversity.3 Rosenberg re­ ferred to those who had grown up through the 1920s and 1930s as the Ameri­ can "Marxist" generation. Whether Marxist or anti-Marxist, he stated, "with­ out Marxism this generation is not only dull-it is nothing, it does not exist."4 Yet Rosenberg experienced it as a stranger because he was "too young to be solidly anchored 'in the twenties' and when the new tide rose [he] was swamped like the rest."5 While being "swamped" with Marx's vision, Rosenberg was also able to revise, or "Americanize," Marxism through John Dewey's pragma­ tism. Dewey's unifying outlook, which emphasized the interaction ofthe indi­ vidual and society, provided Rosenberg with better practical strategies leading to social reform than Marx's utopian vision of revolution. Rosenberg was drawn to Dewey's advocacy of art as "lived" experience and made use of the philosopher's views about the social configuration of the individual.6 By the 1940s, when the political utopian vision of social revolution proved to be futile and its collective ideology was suspect, Rosenberg embraced existentialism and formulated his individualist perspective of the concepts of action and the actor-painter. Even after the 1940s, when Marx's philosophy had lost its appeal among many intellectuals, Rosenberg had no doubt that Marx's ideas were useful: "1 continued to see in Marx's writings a grand scaffold on which current political, social and cultural phenomena appear to interact in a significant way.'" Despite the attraction of Marx's scientific analysis of social structure, Rosenberg opposed the Hegelian determinism in Marx and discredited the abstract collec­ tivity of the proletariat that Marx regarded as the agent of revolution. Rather, fmding in Marx "a new image of the drama ofthe individual and of the mass,"8 Rosenberg investigated the tragic condition of human beings in modem soci- 8 Art Criticism ety. The constant journey of the individual seeking his "non-performable self" is a recurrent theme in Rosenberg's early work. He focused on the theme of"the identity of an actor, individual or collective, sham or genuine, forming itself through acts."9 According to Rosenberg, this is the meaning of life: as people develop directional feeling, they are dynamically going somewhere without knowing exactly where. Such energy informed action painting. "Char­ acter Change and the Drama" (1932) initiated his discussionlo that "art is a recreation ofthe self."11 Taking examples from law, Hamlet, Dostoevski, the Old Testament, and mythology, Rosenberg addressed the transformation of the individual through actions. Drawing on the legal definition of identity, Rosenberg pointed out that the force ofan impersonal system oflaw separated the individual from the self: "The law visualizes the individual as a kind of actor with a role whom the court has located in the situational system of the legal code."12 The law can deal with identities "only by willfully converting persons with histories into emblems of unified actions of a given order."13 The law does not recognize a person but applies its judgments at the end of a series of acts as identity. While differentiating social law from drama, Rosenberg associated the legal character with the character in the drama. Whereas the character "descends" onto a stage to play his part, the individual, a human being, dwells in a specific part of the world and interacts with his surroundings. Countering an eternal rule and a fixed situation of identity, Rosenberg insisted upon the sovereign power of the individual. Using Hamlet as an example, he addressed the individual's capacity to remake himself. Hamlet was a tragic hero who kept arguing, analyzing himself, and delaying action by replacing it with speech.14 Having a choice ofdiscarding or conforming to a fixed identity, Hamlet resisted the identity given to him. Rosenberg focused on this willful rebellion: "Change (and escape from the plot) can be accomplished through one means alone, the dissolution of identity and the reappearance of the individual in a 'reborn' state." 15 Instead of conforming to given rules, the individual should maintain sovereign power to transform himself. The continuous personal revolt trans­ forms the individual and would be conducive to social change. In "Note on Class Contlict in Literature" (1933), Rosenberg analyzed the theoretical tlaw in Marx's collective ideology of class and asserted his interest in a particular human situation. 16 Class struggle, Rosenberg explained, was "the attempt to affirm one large abstract Identity, fixed by a common central Fact, over another."17 This supra-individual concept, to which all indi­ vidual members conform, was detrimental to the search for seltbood. The individual's experience in reality consists of particular acts and cannot be negated by a general idea of class. Rosenberg maintained that the inevitable human despair of dealing with identity is the human irony. Even heroes who vol. 20, no. 1 9 reach the top of material and intellectual power and are exempt from class struggle are unable to evade their fate.